


Forever Lasts the Spring

by shouldersofgiants



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU: Mulder Scully and William are a happy family and nothing hurts, F/M, Humor, Romance, Seasons, prompt, xfwritingchallenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:36:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4900525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldersofgiants/pseuds/shouldersofgiants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of snapshots following Mulder, Scully, and William throughout the seasons (as a family). Written for leiascully's writing challenge on tumblr. Prompt: Seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever Lasts the Spring

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on tumblr and written for leiascully’s writing challenge! Probably AU, maybe a little OOC. Forgive me for wanting nothing more than goofy, domestic Mulder and Sculls as parents, dealing with their child who happens to be as much of a trouble maker as his father. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story. Please let me know what you liked, disliked, etc.!

****Spring****

The back door swings open on its hinges and collides with the wall, resulting in the deepening of an already present chip in the paint. Footsteps alert her to the intruder, but instead of reaching for her gun like she would have done in another life, she automatically reaches for wet wipes in preparation for cleaning the trail of dirt that those little feet are undoubtedly tracking in.

“Mom!” The little boy hollers, running to meet her from the kitchen. He rounds the corner, still fully clothed in his windbreaker and rain boots, just as she had expected.

“Don’t come onto the carpet with those shoes, William.”

He remains at the very edge of the living room where the hard wood floors of the kitchen turn into carpet, bouncing on his toes in excitement. “The leaves are back, mom! Get dad!”

She bites her bottom lip as a soft smile overtakes her. After everything they had been through, she never thought the world would seem as beautiful again, and yet she had found that it had never been more beautiful than it was through her son’s young eyes.

Her other favorite man trots down the stairs behind her, already pulling his jacket on. “Did I hear something about leaves?”

“You did, indeed. Looks like Spring is finally here.” She tilts her head up as Mulder wraps an arm around her waist and kisses her cheek.

“Finally. You coming?”

“Of course.”

Scully follows Mulder outside, her hair blowing a bit in the light breeze while the long-missed sun warms her cheeks. Will waves from across their backyard, ushering them over with an urgency that probably isn’t warranted for the situation. He stands at the base of one of the large cottonwoods that inhabit their backyard, head angled toward the branches that are just a little over his head.

When they reach the child, Mulder bends down and swoops their son onto his shoulders, eliciting a happy laugh from the youngster–almost loud enough to cover the sound of Mulder’s back cracking, an unwelcome reminder that maybe they aren’t as young as they used to be. Scully suggests he might be getting too old for carrying Will around on his shoulders, but Mulder counters that he’ll never be too old for moments like this, with Scully’s hand in his and Will’s fingers tangled in his salt-and-pepper hair.

Together, the family examines the tree. Will pointing out every new leaf bud to his parents. Two or three of the little buds have already opened up and fanned into soft green leaves since they had last checked the tree. Will grumbles about not seeing the buds open for himself, and Mulder suggests that maybe they only open when no one is looking. His son accepts the answer after a few moments of pondering. “How many do you think there are, dad?”

“I don’t know, Will. How many do you think?”

“Maybe a hundred,” the boy answers thoughtfully, tugging a bit on his dad’s hair.

Scully smiles, eyes trailing up and down the trunk. The few leaves that had opened from their protective husks flutter in the wind, edges still soft and pliable with new life. “Just a hundred?”

“Maybe a thousand… Can we count them when all of the leaves come back?”

Mulder chuckles, squeezing the boy’s shins where they rest against his chest. “We can sure try, bud.”

 

****Summer****

With the combination of Mulder’s writing, Scully’s nursing, and William’s summer baseball league, their little family hasn’t had a lot of free time. Truth be told, they were long overdue for a vacation.

“Mom! Come swim!”

“I’ll come in in a little bit.”

“You said that a little bit ago!” The boy sighs, settling on splashing his retreating father instead.

“Don’t worry, Will. I’ll get her.” Mulder approaches her on the beach, enjoying the feeling of sand filling in around his feet with each step almost as much as he enjoys the view in front of him. Scully is stretched across her beach towel, a vision in a bikini and floppy sunhat, sunglasses shielding her eyes from the harsh Hawaiian sun that is instead thoroughly baking her porcelain skin. She continues reading her mystery novel as he sits next to her, already grabbing the sunscreen from her beach bag.

Wordlessly, she rolls over so he can slather the SPF-god-knows-how-much concoction onto her back and shoulders. He insists on getting the front of her body as well, goofy grin spreading across his face as she scolds him for spending too much time on her chest. Mulder argues that he’s never been less than thorough, to which she scoffs and returns to her book. He diligently covers her legs before moving to her stomach, eliciting a surprised yelp when his fingertips brush underneath her bikini bottom.

“Mulder!” She gasps, swatting his hands away with her book. “Our son is right down the beach, don’t you dare.”

“What was the point of finding a private beach if we can’t have a little fun?” He whines, looking frighteningly similar to his son when he’s told he can’t eat dessert before dinner.

“So we can relax away from the crowds of people, _not_ so you can feel me up and traumatize our son. Speaking of which, where did he go?” She scans the shoreline, finding no trace of William.

“I don’t know, he was in the shallow water right there when I came up.” They stand in unison, Scully already ditching her hat and glasses onto the towel for better view. She calls his name but gets no reply.

After a second in which neither of them breath, Scully breaks into a run towards the water, Mulder hot on her heels. She’s ankle deep when a body shoots out of the water a few feet from them, chocolate colored hair matted against his skull as the little boy spits water out of his mouth and giggles as salt water trickles down his face. Scully gasps, trying to find her own breath. “William! I thought you were drowning!”

“I told you to come swim…” The boy grins angelically, but she knows his mannerisms well enough to know that that smile means he’s up to something. Before she has a chance to think further, arms wrap around her waist from behind and hoist her into the air. Suddenly, she’s bent over Mulder’s shoulder, his hand unsurprisingly on her ass to ‘keep her in place’, and then she’s falling, flying through the air and hitting a wave with a splash that echoes in her ears as she is completely submerged in salt water.

She comes up sputtering, half of her hair covering her face in a tangled red mess. “Mulder!!”

He grabs her outstretched arm and pulls her up just before another wave crashes over her. “It was William’s idea.”

“Was not!”

“Was too.”

In retrospect, she isn’t sure what she did to get stuck parenting two children rather than just one. She supposes it’s a good thing she loves them both so much.

“Sorry mom. We just really wanted you to come in the water.”

She sighs, reserving herself to the fact that she can’t deny her son anything.

Eventually, she looks down and notices the cloudy film seeping off of her and into the ocean. “Mulder…” Scully sighs. “You didn’t give me enough time for my sunscreen to sink in.”

The guilt that she expects is annoyingly absent from his expression. Instead, a smug grin spreads across his face. “Guess I’ll have to help you re-apply later.”

He doesn’t expect her retaliation, and consequently ends up with a mouthful of salt and sand as she shoves him underwater to the sound of their son’s laughter.

 

****Fall****

Multicolored leaves crunch beneath her feet as she maneuvers around the house, heels sinking into the damp earth and throwing her slightly off balance.

It’s been a long time since she’s had to move through nature in heels.

Laughter and squeals draw her to the backyard instead of inside their warm home. When she rounds the corner, she finds just about the most endearing sight she’s ever seen.

Mulder is raking stray leaves onto an already towering pile while his miniature follows behind with a rake of his own, half the size of the adult rake and about as productive as a fork. Nonetheless, the little boy is trying his very best.  

After a few minutes of raking nearly every leaf in the vicinity, they step back and admire their handywork. Mulder moves behind William and his hands fall to rest on his son’s shoulders. She sees his fingers flex as he squeezes Will’s shoulders lightly, identical smiles plastered upon both of their faces as they stand together in a proud, awed silence. Like father like son, she thinks, tickled by the tenderness of the moment.

“Hey boys,” she finally calls, selfishly breaking their moment because, frankly, it’s been a long day and she’s been craving hugs from her favorite men.

They greet her ecstatically, Mulder with a soft kiss to her lips and William with a hug around her waist. It isn’t long before Will takes her hand and drags her towards the leaf pile. “Dad and I spent all day raking leaves! You got here just in time to jump in with us.”

“Oooo, lucky me.” She smirks at Mulder over the boy’s head, whose eyes are twinkling with as much childlike excitement as their son.

When it comes down to it, William is hesitant to jump in–to disturb their perfect creation. After some deliberation–”we did not just spend all day raking to not jump in the leaves, Will”–they decide to do it together.

With hands clasped, William in between them, they run and jump into the giant pile that ends up being large enough to swallow all three of them whole. Leaves fill in empty spaces and crunch noisely as they flail around to get some kind of grip. They’re all laughing, gasping for air and sputtering on leaves and dirt that consequently find their way into open mouths. William lets go of their hands so he can scoop leaves around him and toss them back into the air, giggling relentlessly as they shower over him again and again.

Above his head, Mulder’s recently freed hand finds hers and squeezes twice, an unspoken ‘how lucky are we’ communicated through the creases of their palms.

 

****Winter****

It’s a particularly cold winter, but the fresh snow proves to be too tempting to resist when they awaken to it one morning in December. Scully insists that they all bundle up in layers of clothing, and when they finally emerge from the house, Mulder makes a comment about feeling like a humanoid marshmallow. She pulls hard on the scarf around his neck under the guise of tightening it so he won’t be cold.

Their son, having recently watched Frosty the Snowman, is overjoyed that there is finally enough snow to make his own snowman. They disagree on their personal methods of how to start a snowman and argue for a few minutes until Mulder relents to Scully on the condition that he gets to do the head.

William helps diligently for a while, but eventually loses interest and resorts to making snow angels.

After she finishes the base, Scully wanders away to find sticks for the snowman’s arms, but she’s only away from them for a few seconds when a firmly packed snowball hits her square in the back. Little flakes of snow get caught in the collar of her shirt and instantly melt down her back. Scully gasps, manages to bite back a curse on behalf of her son. He hears enough foul language from his father during baseball season, it’s better to not have both parents expose him to that.

It takes her a moment to recover, her back hunched and muscles tight in response to the sudden frozen droplets sliding down her spine. When she finally can move again, besides the action of patting her back frantically and shimmying in an attempt to shake the snow off, she spins around. The first thing she sees is, of course, Mulder.

He has his back to her as he packs snow onto the snowman’s midsection, casually trying to feign innocence. Unphased, she marches up behind him, picks up a handful of clumped snow, and drops it onto the back of his head.

His reaction is instantaneous: a curse, arched back, shimmying and patting his coat like she had only moments ago. When he turns to see her standing at attention behind him, he gapes. It’s only after she registers the complete and utter shock in his eyes that she realizes that Mulder was not the culprit of the snowball, and had, in fact, been innocently building the snowman when she assaulted him with snow.

Their unspoken communication proves handy once again as Mulder sees equal amounts of shock reflected in her eyes, and simultaneously they turn to look at William. William, who is standing a few feet away with rosy cheeks, a goofy grin that tries to hide his childish giggle, and a mischievous air surrounding him like the cloud of his own breath.

“Mom, did I tell you I’ve been practicing my pitches?” He asks innocently, wide-eyed and heart-breakingly precious. Mulder starts chuckling and Scully joins him, muttering apologies to Mulder as he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her towards him. She automatically sinks into his hug, only to receive another handful of snow down her coat a second later. She yelps and jumps away.

“Ok, ok, now we’re even Scully!” Mulder laughs, pulling her back towards him.

She hums. “Not entirely.” They glance over at William, who suddenly looks like a deer caught in the headlights.

They all end up wet and cold after a rather intense snow fight, but they do finish the snowman. Mulder, as promised, is responsible for the head. When they later step back to admire their creation, Mulder is beaming, William is giggling, and Scully rolls her eyes.

The head is shaped like an upside-down teardrop, with a circular rock as the mouth and long, oval eyes carved into the mass and filled in with smaller pebbles.

Mulder made their family snowman into an alien.

“Nice, huh?”

“Best snowman ever, dad.” William announces, leaning into his father’s side.

“It’s certainly unique,” Scully eventually acquiesces.

Mulder offers to make hot chocolate to warm them all up, but standing there with her two favorite boys and their spooky alien snowman, she’s fairly sure she’s never felt warmer.

The snowman is the last bit of snow to melt from their yard that winter, and Scully can’t help but watch it with an air of suspicion as they crawl closer to Spring and it still doesn’t melt. Mulder suggests that it might be an X-File. Scully laughs, rolls her eyes. She knows in that moment that neither hot chocolate, nor the coming Spring could possibly make her any warmer inside than she already is.


End file.
